Case Number 25280: Small Claims Court

AFTER FALL, WINTER

The Charge

"There's a big difference between you thinking your life is interesting
and anyone else thinking it is...and let me assure you...no one does."
-- Wise words from a dominatrix

The Case

From what I've read online, there appear to be two schools of thought on Eric
Schaeffer: he's a sensitive genius, or he's a hack and a douche. I'm not sure
who's in the former camp, but many Internet film reviewers seem squarely in the
latter. After Fall, Winter was the first Eric Schaeffer movie I'd ever
seen, and even if I had never read a single word about the guy, I would have
walked away from this film solidly on Team Douche.

After Fall, Winter isn't just a bad movie, it's an obnoxious one.
Every frame weeps pretension, and at one point, the insufferable lead character
weeps: in gratitude when a bill collector offers to enroll him in a payment
protection plan for his credit card -- even though he's half-a-million dollars
in the hole and three months overdue with a payment. Unfortunately, that moment,
which would have been priceless had this been a comedy, is no more preposterous
than anything else that happens here.

After Fall, Winter is a sequel to Fall, a film Schaeffer made
in 1997. In Fall, he played Michael, a writer-turned-cab-driver who had
an affair with a supermodel (take that, Louie De Palma!). Now, it's 15
years later. I don't know what Michael has been doing, but it's not writing best
sellers: as the film opens, he's $600,000 in debt and can't sell a book. He
moves out of his pricey New York City apartment into smaller digs in a
"bad" neighborhood -- we know it's a "bad" neighborhood
because a bunch of guys who appear to belong to the Latin Kings street gang are
hanging out on the stoop. Schaeffer spends a lot of time showing us how
miserable the entitled Michael is living amongst the common folks. Presumably,
he could whip up another successful book, but as he explains to his agent, he
doesn't want to write the kinds of things people want to read, so rather than
sell his soul and write, say, Twilight, he's stuck living with the Latin
Kings.

A break in the malaise comes when Michael gets an invite to move to Paris
(?!). There, he meets-cute the beautiful Sophie (Lizzie Brocheré, One to
Another). Naturally, she's smitten with this guy who's dead broke, has no
prospects, talks about nothing besides himself, and is old enough to be her
father. (At one point, Schaeffer tries to soften the age-difference blow. He
mentions that his first novel was published in 1986; Sophie says she was born in
1985. Michael asks her if she's OK dating someone 15 years older than she is.
While shaving nearly a decade off Schaeffer's actual age makes things a bit more
palatable, it also means Michael would have published his first book at 16.)

Sophie works as some sort of freelance hospice provider. She has the good
fortune to care for terminally ill people who don't look sick and who die by
simply closing their eyes and smiling, so she's spared all that yucky stuff like
death rattles and labored breathing. But she also has a secret night job as a
dominatrix. Quelle chance! Michael is a secret masochist who pays women
to smack him around and tell him what a failure he is! And neither knows about
the other! It's like Pillow Talk with strap-ons!

Unfortunately, when the subject of S&M (that's sadomasochism) comes up
between S and M (that's Sophie and Michael), she mercifully declines the
invitation to sodomize her swain, thus leading Michael to do something idiotic,
which causes Sophie to do something even more idiotic. The end.

Schaeffer serves up this silliness up with such an absurd level of
seriousness that you'd think he was remaking Schindler's List. His
Michael is such an aggressively annoying character that at first I thought this
film was a satire about self-absorbed dilettantes. I was pretty far into it
before I realized that this was supposed to be a tragic romantic drama. And, in
case you're wondering, no, it's really not daring that the conflict comes from
the characters' interests in alterna-sex; quite the opposite, actually. In fact,
the S&M business is treated in a depressing freakshow way, with punishment
-- and not the satisfying kind -- doled out like a Hays Code directive. The last
time I saw a film with such a conservative message about sex, it was a hygiene
movie.

When the relationship crisis is that the girl of your dreams -- whom you've
known all of five days -- refuses to strap on a hunk of plastic and bugger you,
it can't help but make the proceedings feel trite, if not asinine. Schaeffer
treats the character's sexuality with such profundity that it all comes off as
silly. At one point, during an argument over oral sex (what else?), Sophie
insults Michael by telling him to lose weight. You'd think a guy who pays women
to call him names might be thrilled by this slightly degrading crack, but
Michael gets peevish and goes into the bathroom to pout. When he emerges, he
announces: "That's the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me."

If Schaeffer thinks that's the meanest thing, then he might want to
disconnect his Internet. Fairly or not, the trashing of Schaeffer and his work
seems to be a kind of online sport; "lose 10 pounds and I'll blow you"
is a Valentine by comparison.

Here's what I don't get. Eric Schaeffer has been in the entertainment
business for years. He's made movies, written books, had TV series...obviously,
the guy has something to offer that's kept him going. So, why is his movie proxy
such a drip? Why has he foisted off this wholly unlikable cipher in two films,
with two more planned over the next 30 years (according to what I've read)?
Michael isn't charmingly neurotic like a Woody Allen character, or a sweet,
hopeful dreamer, or a big-hearted guy looking for love; he's a pretentious,
self-centered creep. I actually resented the time I had to invest watching him
in this film -- 132 agonizingly long minutes. I just wanted to scream at the
guy, "Do you hear yourself? Do you know how annoying you sound?"

Maybe if Schaeffer actually tapped into the things that actually do work in
his life, gave Michael some sort of ambition or personality, showed him caring
about something other than himself and the lure of being on the receiving end of
a sexual assault; maybe if the other characters were fleshed out and weren't
simply on hand to provide affirmations for Michael, we'd have something
approaching insight, if not entertainment. Instead, After Fall, Winter
just comes across like a twee and putrid vanity project with little merit for
anyone who's not a friend or fan of Schaeffer.

The disc from Kino Lorber sports a fine transfer -- the film is very well
shot -- and an acceptable stereo audio track.

Supplements include trailers for two other films: Modus Operandi and
another Schaeffer film, They're Out of Business, which doesn't look too
bad. There are also two trailers for After Fall, Winter, the Theatrical
and the Unrated. While the Theatrical offers a reasonable idea of what the film
is about, the hooty Unrated version is an eye opener. Like trailers for many bad
movies (see Born to Ride and For the Love of Money, for starters),
this one looks like it was cut for an entirely different film: all dialogue is
in French, ominous music plays throughout, and it's filled with violence (i.e.,
Michael being smacked by dominatrices). It looks like a foreign erotic thriller,
which After Fall, Winter unquestionably is not.

The Verdict

Like the longest, most delusional, and self-important personal ad ever made,
After Fall, Winter brings self-aggrandizing wish-fulfillment to a whole
new and wholly unsavory level. Avoid at all costs.